


porcelain and glass

by ghostofgatsby



Series: I'd kill for you. I'd die for you. I'd live for you. [11]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Dreams, Gen, Tiny Figurines, Urban Magic Yogs, falling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4661361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostofgatsby/pseuds/ghostofgatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the first dreams Ross ever had was of falling.<br/>He was outside on the roof, looking up at the sky on a cloudless day. When he started to say something about the color, he turned to Smith. Or Trott.<br/>He saw that they were teetering on the ledge of the building. He asked loudly what they were doing, but they wouldn’t reply.<br/>Slowly, Ross would walk over, take ahold of their sleeve, and pull them away.<br/>But his foot would slip.<br/>And he'd find himself falling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	porcelain and glass

**Author's Note:**

> I was really happy about all these fluffy headcanons over at garbagecourtfuzzies.tumblr.com  
> and this happened. It’s a bit cheesy and a bit probably not grammatically accurate but *shrug*
> 
> Ross-centric one-shot. I’d really love to write more of him, and I have a backstory in my head, but (like everything) just not enough time/too many other things I want to write first. Eventually I’ll get to it. Eeeeeeeventually....
> 
> The falling dreams take place pre Sips. I imagine Ross develops dreams that are normally like abstract watercolor, without any real shape or definition, but have feelings in them. And sometimes Ross dreams things like in this (which is less common).
> 
> The rest of the fic takes place post crowning Sips, pre Will; pre the start of the story arc in this series, you could say.
> 
> Falling, Dreams, Tiny Figurines  
> Rated T for brief language I think  
> If I need to tag anything else (I don’t think I do, but it doesn’t hurt to ask) let me know.
> 
> want to reblog? https://ghostofgatsby13.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/porcelain-and-glass-ghostofgatsby/
> 
> apologies for the ridiculously long author's note at the end

One of the first dreams Ross ever had was of falling.

He was outside on the roof, looking up at the sky on a cloudless day. When he started to say something about the color, he turned to Smith.

Or Trott. Ross had the same dream a dozen times, before it went away. Either or, it didn't matter who was there at the beginning.

He turned to them, and saw that they were teetering on the ledge of the building. He asked loudly what they were doing. They wouldn’t reply.

Slowly, Ross would walk over, take ahold of their sleeve, and pull them away.

But his foot would slip.

And he'd find himself falling.

Slow moving pictures, like powerpoint slides Sips used for his business meetings, would appear one by one.

Smith and Trott's faces watching down at him and getting farther away as he fell.

Himself, flailing backwards.

And then dust covering the concrete.

The gargoyle never fell in real life.

He had experience from climbing the church; he never made a leap he couldn't land. He could judge distances precisely, and if he was incorrect (which wasn't often) he'd use his claws to slide down whatever surface he was on.

His claws looked more like human hands the longer he spent with Smith and Trott, but his hands worked the same when climbing.

He didn't miss the claws. He didn't miss the sharpness they had, how he was so afraid of hurting Smith and Trott at first, and how his own strength would break the smallest of things if he wasn’t careful.

Everything Ross broke he felt obligated to atone for. If he couldn't fix it, and it couldn't be replaced, then all he could do was throw it away.

Ross hated letting anything go to waste. Even bits of glass too small to heal his wounds. They could serve some purpose despite being small. They just needed a little thought and care.

He had the idea when Trott started buying boxes of tea with tiny animal figurines.

"Here, sunshine. You like small things, right?"

He'd pressed the figure into Ross' grasp and continued putting the tea bags in the great glass jar they stored them in.

Ross turned the figure over and over in his hands. It was a blue-gray wolf, with tiny details etched in porcelain. Mind turning over like he did the figurine, Ross thanked Trott quietly and crept out into the living room.

In a large matchbox on the windowsill, he kept the bits of glass that were too small, as well as an assortment of other things. A copper penny, shiny and new; a plastic screw; odd buttons; a thimble; an itty bitty donut from some child's dollhouse.

That day, Ross set the porcelain wolf among his trinkets and picked up a piece of glass.

Rough around the edges, mud brown. From an IBC Rootbeer bottle.

Ross concentrated. He held the glass until it warmed, magic making it malleable, and then used his thumbnail to make indents. He sat under the window for hours, feeling the sun creep lower onto his head and neck before disappearing completely.

Trott called him for dinner not long after that.

Before Ross moved, he stored his work away. What he had looked like a literal piece of shit, but it was somewhat charming. He'd work on it another day.

 

Ross was made of marble and magic, and though he never knew why, he understood the material intimately.

It was a wordless understanding. He knew how stone would cave to pressure just by touching and feeling. He could tell if the foundations of a building were level, and if the glass of windows were steady. Ross could tell if marks on a stone surface were intentional or accidental. He could tell the age, and sometimes the condition of the rest of the building just by tracing the lines in one brick.

All this information, he understood wordlessly.

He would try to explain it to Trott and Smith, but he never found the right terms.

Magic is magic, as Trott would say. Explaining something innate isn't always easy.

 

In the long, cold nights of winter, Ross fiddled. His skill increased. The first dozen things he made he scrapped and repeated, but it got easier.

Every success he lined up on the windowsill, or if the days were too cold and drafty, on the lip of the tv cabinet. A bear, a cat, a dog. And later, a seal, a horse, a man with a hat. They always had enough glass from beer bottles and Trott's charm-making, so Ross never ran out of materials.

The rest of the winter, the figurines turn up scattered about the house. Sitting next to the kettle, on the back of the toilet, among the coffee-table detritus, in the cupholders in Smith's car...

As a year passed, Sips bought him a little cabinet, with square cubby-holes in a lattice pattern.

"For all your tiny crafted shit, Ross." He told him.

They hung it to the left of the television. Ross spent the rest of the evening staring up at it. The light glinted off the glass, and he looked at each figurine with fond memory.

One of the figurines was a mud-brown piece of glass that looked like a pile of crap. And another, which he'd made recently, was an angel with wings as blue as the sea.

So small, but so intricately detailed.

There was beauty in fragility.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> like Ross, I too, am obsessed with cute tiny things.  
> like look at this nautilus! eeeeee  
> http://www.lookingglassworld.com/collections/Ocean/slides/Nate_the_Nautilus.htm  
> and a walrus, too  
> http://www.lookingglassworld.com/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=10&pid=760#top_display_media  
> and like Ross again, I collected literal trash as a kid, bits of plastic for no reason. That got thrown away when I grew up and was like "why did I keep this?"  
> One of these was a tiny plastic lavender Easter egg from age 8/9 or so. I was jumping on a trampoline with a girl my own age and she was like "before you leave, you can have this!" and I was like "thanks ^///^" and kept it for like...five years. because feelings are weird.  
> I kinda still collect things. in my room at home there's a box of random coins/tokens and an assortment of fake keys.
> 
> "a large matchbox" like those really long sticks used to light candles in churches
> 
> porcelain figurines like Rose Tea Figurines  
> and glass miniatures like Russian glass stuff
> 
> The Rose Tea figurines remind me of home, and (EDIT) last time I was home I took some pictures of them.  
> check those out here: https://ghostofgatsby13.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/rose-tea-figurines/  
> My aunt and uncle had TONS like A WHOLE SET of the animal ones.  
> And the glass ones remind me of my grandma and grandpa's house, where they had all these tiny little animals and some ornate vases and a figure of a man in a banana boat, in this glass cabinet in what I called "the green room" because the carpet was dark green.
> 
> lining the figurines on the lip of the tv cabinet was something I used to do as a kid with Winnie the Pooh figurines. Those were a bit bigger than the other one’s I’ve mentioned.  
> There was one that was just a basket of lemons, and for some reason that one has been and still is my favorite :P.
> 
> Yeah. I uh, I get nostalgic about stuff like this.  
> *shy wave* Hi, glass figurine anon here.  
> (thanks to hatonic-soulmates and trashwaystopcock for stirring up ideas with me! it was awesome)  
> Do you (as in, the people who run UMY aesthetic/mainblogs/other yog blogs)  
> want me to leave any anon comment I make with “~ ghostofgatsby” at the end?  
> Because I can, but it doesn't really matter to me because I don't have a tumblr and wouldn't be able to track the tag or anything.  
> I just figure now that I'm interacting a bit more that it might be easier to attribute the ideas since some of them I use and I feel awkward waving over here like "yeah, that was me"  
> because I don't want to seem pretentious by claiming it. I'm not trying to brag, or intentionally draw people over here to my ao3 (that's just added bonus I guess if it happens).  
> and I'm not trying to claim that only I can use the ideas I suggest  
> (absoutely not, I want other people to share in it, that's why I comment)  
> I just really, really don't want a tumblr for this ao3, but I still love talking with the community.  
> Is that too weird, or...? I don’t know. If you'd prefer me not to, that's fine- I don't want to cause anyone any anxiety. ao3’s my only outlet to this fandom besides commenting anonymously on tumblr. Every time I think about making some other account (like Skype, for instance) for ghostofgatsby, I talk myself out of it for various reasons.  
> So, that’s me explaining myself.  
> *shrug*


End file.
